Professional social network LinkedIn has priced its IPO at $45 per share, according to a release issued on the company’s site. This is at the high end of the range, which was estimated at $42 to $45 per share yesterday. This puts the company’s valuation at $4.5 billion.
As we wrote yesterday, the company originally stated the price per share range as $32 and $35 but increased this by 30 percent to $42 to $45 per share yesterday. The company is offering a total of 7,840,000 shares and is looking to raise as much as $406 million in the offering. In addition, LinkedIn Corporation has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 1,176,000 shares to cover over-allotments, if any.
The professional social network is set to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange tomorrow morning, under the symbol LNKD.
It’s certainly a strong pricing and valuation for the company, which only posted $2.08 million in net income for the first quarter of the year. Hopefully, LinkedIn doesn’t face the same fate as Chinese social networking giant RenRen, which priced its IPO at $14 per share and saw the value drop after trading began. We’ll report back on the Street’s response tomorrow.